In the summer of 2021, Jeff Bezos blasted into space.
On that day alone, US news networks
dedicated 212 minutes to covering it.
"Call it prime delivery."
And climate change coverage, for the whole year?
"Climate change is widely reported..."
"Human-caused climate change..."
267 minutes.
Networks spent almost as much time on one day
covering a controversial billionaire's 10-minute space trip
as they did on every aspect of climate change
around the world all year.
But when it is covered, it can leave people feeling:
"Sad, about the current situation."
"Scared for my children."
"Kind of sad."
"A bit of anger, bit of frustration.
Not many good feelings, to be honest."
And people who feel this way do not feel motivated
to take climate action.
"You can have all the science you want.
But if you can't effectively communicate it,
then it almost doesn't matter."
But we know what's wrong and how we can fix it.
So let's talk, about how we talk, about climate change.
Here's a thought experiment: how many magazines
for cars, sports, music or fashion can you think of?
How about YouTube channels for cooking, gaming, or travel?
And how many dedicated to climate change?
(Except ours, of course.)
I did a not-so-scientific experiment, using
some magazines I had lying around, all over 100 pages.
Out of all the articles, only two even mentioned climate issues.
This would likely vary from country to country.
I also looked at the websites of some major
media organizations. Again, not scientifically.
Climate change stories didn't feature prominently,
although some pages did have sections dedicated to the topic.
And here at DW, climate change gets one or two stories per day, out of the 38 on the homepage.
One of the only studies on this topic found that,
between 1997 and 2009,
climate change coverage in 27 countries
made up just 0.6% of total reporting.
A huge existential threat to all life on earth,
and we're just not really talking about it.
To find out why, we have to go back in time,
to the era of bleached hair,
low-rise jeans,
and questionable music videos...
the early 2000s.
This was when climate change really hit the stage.
And being an environmental scientist back then
was not an easy job.
"No one has ever actually had to stand up and say,
we're relying on a substance that is sort of
guaranteeing this wide scale destruction.
And it's like this massive task to get rid of it.
And this massive consequence, if we don't."
Ketan Joshi worked for Australia's national science agency
and now consults with climate NGOs and activists
to help them get their message across.
Climate scientists were, and still are, charged
with telling the world some really bad news.
And it's also complicated to explain.
"What we tend to know about climate change
is in the form of tables or complex figures
or numbers that are difficult for the ordinary person to relate to."
Susie Wang has a background in environmental psychology
and works on how we can communicate climate change better.
"People are speaking about timelines that
are either very far in the distant past
or very far in the distant future."
Take the IPCC report:
it is the most detailed look at the state of the earth.
And it's free, unlike many studies.
But the summary of it is 40 pages long, and starts like this.
Lots of big words. Certainly not light reading.
And so many people do not have access, or time, to research the science on their own.
Here's where the science communicators come in:
NGOs,
your favorite Twitter stars,
that one friend who really likes animals,
and the journalists, like myself.
But it is literally my job to know this stuff,
and I had to look up what cryosphere means
(it's the frozen water on earth).
"There are so many journalists back here, back home,
who want to do this,
but they don't even have the knowledge.
There is very limited capacity to cover these topics, right?"
Shola Lawal reports on conflict, women, and climate change.
Normally based out of Lagos,
she's actually just started working for DW.
I was completely unaware of this,
when I asked her for an interview.
"They don't have the journalists who can cover this
in a way that is accurate,
in a way that is simple for people to understand.
And in a way that is sustainable."
Even when there are enough journalists,
climate reporting is still tough.
A recent Oxford study found these common barriers.
Climate change happens slowly,
but the news cycle is fast.
The topic depresses audiences.
Covering it requires money for travel and specialized reporters.
There's pressure from media bosses and advertisers
to cover other topics.
All this means the topic is under-reported.
And that little reporting also used to be full of misinformation.
According to a landmark paper published in 2004,
it was due to the pursuit of balanced reporting.
"Print media often gave equal credence or
space to relevant experts or scientists,
as well as climate deniers or skeptics that were
representing outlier views."
Lucy McAllister studies the communication
of environmental issues and is the lead author
on the most recent paper looking at
the accuracy of reporting on climate science.
"So this was, you know, in the early 2000s,
hugely misleading to the general public."
99% of scientists agree on climate change,
so it's inaccurate to give all viewpoints equal weight.
And who were the deniers and skeptics?
You can probably guess.
We've covered a lot of it already in this video.
The research shows that climate change information
is now mostly accurate.
So is the issue solved?
"The climate debate has shifted or transformed,
emerged in different ways,
in more subtle discourses.
In academic literature, it's known as discourses of delay."
"Groups who 10 years ago were saying that
climate change wasn't real,
what they're saying now is that
the energy transition is too expensive."
And these discourses are repeated everywhere,
from politicians to companies.
Others include:
Individualism. You are responsible, aka. the carbon footprint.
Technological optimism. Future technologies will save us.
Fossil fuel solutionism. Fossil fuels are
part of the energy transition.
And the most common: All talk, little action.
"Europe will be the world s first climate-neutral continent by 2050."
"...be carbon neutral for the decade."
Climate promises made by political leaders
and companies that are not followed through on.
All of these tactics were shown in "Don't Look Up",
a recent movie seen as an allegory for climate change.
"This comet is what we call a planet killer."
"At this exact moment, I say we sit tight and assess."
Must sound familiar to climate scientists.
And as a journalist, it's hard to find a middle ground here.
Solutions can be expensive.
Some countries continue to need fossil fuels.
Individual choices do make a difference.
If we don't mention these aspects,
we're in danger of being labeled climate activists and ignored.
And what about the viewers, readers and listeners?
The situation we're in is so huge, it's just too complex for our brains to fathom.
"We can't see it. We can't smell it.
Taste it, feel it. You know, it's not an easy, visible enemy."
And the most publicized climate victims
are super hard to grasp.
"We're talking about how glaciers are melting.
That's not something that someone in Lagos
is really going to care about."
We naturally value what's near us more than
something far away.
This phenomenon is called discounting.
So support for climate action decreases
due to what's happening around us,
like a cold winter, or low gas prices.
And talking about all this in the first place?
Probably not going to make you feel great.
"When you perceive that something is threatening
to you, you push it away instinctively
as a way to preserve yourself."
And that's not the only way your brain avoids these issues.
Let's say you know meat is bad for the environment
and eat it anyway.
These conflicting beliefs lead to cognitive
dissonance, which is the discomfort from internal conflict.
You either change your behavior or just rationalize your choice.
And that's where we come back to the huge, complex nature of the problem.
Alone, it seems like what we do makes no difference.
"I think I could do more, of course.
We all should do more, but can we do enough?"
"Actually right now I realize that I haven't thought about it before, but I know that it's a must."
"I am just one person and I would like but
I [cannot] do many things."
"I mean, I care a little bit about climate change.
But it has to [change] globally."
"It's sometimes hard to be aware of all the things to do, and also sometimes I think it
can be a little bit overwhelming, because you feel kind of powerless."
So what should change?
Let's start with the science.
Climate science needs to be more accessible,
and also easier to comprehend.
More scientific publications need to be open access,
and complicated topics need to be more relatable.
"Caring about climate change means recognizing
that climate change affects other things that you care about."
You're more likely to be interested in a study about
health, housing, or food, than insects dying out.
Luckily (or not?) climate change impacts all of these areas, and more.
Same goes for climate reporting.
It would help if it were more integrated with other topics.
And also told from the level of everyday experiences.
"If you talk to people in Lagos and say, 'Oh, have you felt that the sun just seems hotter
these past years?', they can immediately connect with that.
And then you can start to expand
their scope of knowledge and say, this is why it's happening."
This places the science in context.
Another example is a human lifespan over a
graph of the earth's warming.
Context also helps people recognize and fight those discourses of delay.
Which, in turn, paves the way for a focus on the solutions, rather than the problems.
This shift reduces our impulse to push the
topics away, and makes people feel more engaged.
Focusing on collective power over individual
responsibility can also help.
But perhaps most importantly, we need to talk
more about the topic.
We're being pushed to not care about climate change,
which is just delaying the urgent action needed to combat it.
Let's change that.
"So what do you think?
How do we get more people to care about climate change?
Let us know in the comments
and don't forget to come back every Friday
for brand new videos.
Oh, and subscribe!
Woah!
So windy!"